Re: West Virginia creationism

Ron Dean wrote:
 

Vincent Haycock wrote:

On Wed, 8 May 2024 15:01:28 -0400, Ron Dean
<rondean-noreply@gmail.com> wrote:
 

Vincent Maycock wrote:

On Tue, 7 May 2024 22:47:15 -0400, Ron Dean
<rondean-noreply@gmail.com> wrote:
 

Vincent Maycock wrote:

On Mon, 6 May 2024 23:53:05 -0400, Ron Dean
<rondean-noreply@gmail.com> wrote:
 

Vincent Maycock wrote:

On Mon, 6 May 2024 15:29:30 -0400, Ron Dean

<snip>

I understand the obsession to "explain away" these deserters, but
honesty over bias needs to be the ruling objective not excuses.

 No, there's nothing to explain away.  There will always be crackpots
amidst the more reasonable background of mainstream science.
 

You call them crackpots, but as I pointed out they are just as educated
with the same credentials as mainstream scientist. The question is what
are your credentials to pass judgement on these intellectuals including
scientist holding PhDs. Probably nothing more than extreme bias.

 No, a PhD is not a license to believe in nonsense, although some
people act like it is.  You've made the error of argument from
authority here, since even PhDs can easily get things wrong.
 

You called them crackpots.

 So do you believe that crackpots exist, or are all claims to
scientific validity  equally worthwhile, in your view??
 

Of course crackpots exist. However, calling them crackpots because they
offer a different point-of-view from one's own view is protective and
self-serving.

 I call them crackpots because they're out of step with mainstream
science without adequate grounds to be that way -- not because they
offer a different point of view from my own.
 

This is they way any contrary evidence to
scientific theories IE evolution or abiogenesis is dismissed without
knowing or understanding anything about the case they bring against
evolution. When one relies strictly on on sided information and based on
this, they are in no position to pass judgement. It's exactly parallel
to a case where the Judge hears the prosecution, then pronounces I've
heard enough - _guilty_! I strongly suspect this describes you knowing
nothing about actual ID or the information

 Okay, why don't you fill me in about what I'm "missing" in the field
of information science as it relates to Intelligent Design?
 

I don't know that you are familiar with anything ID proposes, or the
case against evolution and especially the impossibility

 You don't know that.
 

of life from inorganic, dead chemistry. There are over 500 known amino acids
know in nature, but all living organisms are made up of only 20 different amino acids.
What what was the odds of this happening without deliberate choice?

 It's just the number of amino acids that happened to be in the
earliest genetic code, obviously.  If there were 25 amino acids in
living things, you'd ask the same question.
 

And all are
left-handed, but if they were the result of blind chance, purposeless
and aimless natural processes about half of the amino acids should have
been right-hand.

 This was probably the result of a "frozen accident," where the
earliest life forms were left-handed by chance, and all their
descendants were also as a result of that.
 

This is not the case. Exactly what was the selection
process that selected this particular set of 20 out of 500 known amino
acids? Of course there are educated guesses, hypothesis and theories,
but no 0ne knows.

 So you agree that Intelligent Design is not known to be the answer to
these kind of questions?
 

Each protein is expressed by a particular order or
arrangement of amino acids. The smallest protein known, the saliva of a
Gila minster is 20 amino acids. What are the odds of these 20 amino
acids having the correct sequence on just one protein by chance?
The number would be greater than the number of atoms (10^80) in the
known universe. What is so incredible is that there is about 1 million
proteins in the human body each made up of a specific order of amino acids.

 Obviously, the proteins didn't poof into existence all at once. You
would start out with something that only vaguely resembles the protein
you're concerned with, and then natural selection will turn it into
that protein over time by removing what doesn't resemble the target
protein and retaining what does.
 

What do you  offered by IDest pointing put
the fallacies in abiogenesis or evolution. If you think you know
anything regarding this, it's no doubt from proponent of evolution.

 No,  I used to be a creationist and I'm quite familiar with their
arguments.
 

Really? What turned you against both creationism or intelligent design?

 I was a young-earth creationist, so my reading of geology and
paleontology led me to the conclusion that flood geology is a cartoon
version of science with nothing to support it.

Around the same time,

I became an atheist since Christianity didn't seem to make any sense.>

 

So, you turned to atheism and evolution, not because you first found positive evidence for evolution and atheism, but rather because of negative mind-set concerning the flood and Christianity.

The fact of the matter is, intelligent design says nothing about

either the flood story nor Christianity or any religion or God for that matter. ID observe essentially the same empirical evidence as evolutionist do, but they attribute what they see to intelligent design
rather than to evolution. Both the evolutionist and the ID est interprets the same evidence to _fit_ into his own paradigm. IOW the paradigm rules. Now to clear up another situation. While IDest see evidence which supports design, there is no known evidence which points to the identity of the designer. One may believe based upon faith the the designer is Jehovah, Allah or Buddha  or some other Deity but this is belief

 

At one time I was also an evolutionist. In addition to a book I was
challenged to read, and to some extinct, what I discussed above I also
thought that after reading Paley, Darwin dedicated his effort to
discounting or disproving Paley's God. This seemed to be more than a
coincidence.

 How do you square that with the enormous amount of research he did
into the subject?  If he was just "mad at God" you would think he
would have published immediately with only a scant amount of
supporting evidence to support his ideas.
 

There is something, rarely mentioned in the literature.  Darwin was a
Christian until a great tragedy befell him and his family. That's the
death of his daughter, Annie in 1851 at the age of 10.  This naturally
caused great pain to Darwin and this terrible tragedy turned him against
religion and God whom he blamed. One could certainly sympathize with him
on the loss of his daughter.

 What's your explanation for why Annie had to die?  Is it better than
my explanation? (which is that there is no reason she died -- nothing
in the universe is out there to care whether she lived, suffered, or
died)
 

Everyone dies, including you and me. Some much older and others  much younger. Annie didn't have to die, but she was exposed the the weather or a disease which caused her death.
I personally think there is something terribly wrong with the devaluation of human life caused by accepting evolution. We descended from common ancestors along with chimps, gorillas, monkeys horses, swine and dogs. Consequently, we are just animals same as other animals. So, as animals in every respect we are of no more worth or value than any other animal. So, we kill and eat other animals so, from a moral standpoint, why is this more acceptable? The question was asked in a YouTube site of young college people, "If you saw a man and your dog, that you loved, drowning you could only save one which would you save"? As I recall the everyone except a professor said they would save their dog. This means they would let the man die, his life is of no more value than a dog's life. This I'm afraid is where evolution is leading the human race.

 That is utter garbage on so many levels it's difficult to know where to start.
First, the argument works just as much for creationism. After
all, in most creationist accounts, the God(s) design all animals
including humans. So you could just as well say "we were designed by a common designer along with chimps, gorillas, monkeys horses, swine and dogs. Consequently, we are just designed things the same as other animals. So, as designed things in every respect we are of no more worth or value than any other stuff the designer designed".
 In fact, your opening gambit is directly expressed in the Bible: Judges 10:16 or Ecclesiastes 3:19: "For what happens to the children of man and
what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other.
They all have the same breath"
 so a much stronger commitment to "identity" than you find in
evolution.
That whether one accepts evolution or believes in a designer makes
no difference especially for YOUR designer. After all you claim (not that anybody  believes you at this point) that the only thing the designer did was to meddle a bit with DNA  and organic chemistry a few  billion years ago and gave all living things the same code, and things like flagella to us and bacteria alike - and then disappeared. In fact, you made the  ubiquity and early appearanceof body plans in the
Cambrian your main evidence. So from this it would follow that as far as the designer is concerned,  we are indeed the same as, and not more valuable than,  bacteria,
or maybe Brachiopods such as craniidas today.
 Your nonsense also contradicts the historical record. Ideas
such as the University Declaration of human rights, the equality
and dignity of all humans etc are decidedly ideas of modernity, when creationist thoughts were in decline.  Go back just
a few decades before Darwin and look eg at the legal process, the still frequent use of torture, the death
penalty for minor thefts etc etc, Or the atrocities committed as a matter of course during wars- the international rules of armed conflict again coming on the scene only after creationist ideas were in decline. Oh, and of course the slave-holding South, creationism
central even then, trained dogs to hunt and kill
humans (well, their human property) which gives you
a clear idea of what life they valued more.
Conversely, people having strong emotional attachments
to their pets is documented long before modernity. A
Roman emperor had a servant who injured his dog brutally
killed, and in the early 17th century, we read e.g. that
Sir Roger de Coverley, was praised for his loyalty to
his servants like this:  "They had all grown old with him, from
his grey-headed butler to ‘the old House-dog, and . . . a grey Pad
that is kept in the Stable with great Care and Tenderness out of regard to his past Services, tho’ he has been useless for several Years’"
 So for the writer, a human servant and a service dog and
horse are pretty much treated in the same breath, their status was due to the servant role that they shared.
 The watershed moment, if there was any, was the ate 17th, and
18th century in Europe, when "social pets" became more common,
animals valued for their social bonds rather tha n their usefulness, and that again is centuries before Darwin. (cf.eg.
The history of emotional attachment to animals by Ingrid Traut,
The Routledge Companion to Animal-Human History, 2018)
  Are there any ethical implications of common descent?
I doubt it, though maybe in the margins, a slightly more pronounced tendency to be in favour of animal rights and
against vivisection, But even this is ambivalent,
There was a really interesting historical dialectic between Darwin,
and Christian conceptions of animal souls, played out in the vivisection
debate in Victoria Britain. The Darwinian notion of the relatedness of
all life had given a  boost to the anti-vivisectionists, and
observing that Darwinian arguments had success where religious ones had
had less let religion based anti-vivisectionists like Hull revive
theological arguments about animal souls.